Breakup of MPS, teacher pay linked to performance endorsed

In a series appearing each Sunday over eight weeks, "Building a Better Teacher" looked at challenges to the way teachers are trained, evaluated, paid, promoted and dismissed - and how all of it comes to bear on student success.

Madison - The state's largest teachers union on Tuesday took a surprise shift on the education-reform debate in Wisconsin by embracing measures it has opposed previously, including teacher evaluations based on student test scores, performance pay and an unexpected proposal to split up the Milwaukee Public Schools system.

Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, announced the proposals Tuesday at the organization's headquarters in Madison, saying that the union shared the responsibility of bolstering the quality of its educator workforce.

WEAC's support for salary restructuring and new evaluations was generally well-received by outsiders Tuesday, but nobody offered similar support for breaking up MPS, even those who have been critical of the district's operations.

WEAC is supporting a statewide teacher evaluation system based on student test scores and peer review, which would lead to a more organized system of moving underperforming educators out of the profession and into new careers, Bell said.

She also said that the state's outdated model of paying teachers based on years of education should be replaced with one that rewards high-performing teachers who meet learning objectives with students. Instructors who take on hard-to-staff positions and additional responsibilities should receive extra compensation, as should teachers who earn their national board certification, she said.

But WEAC's proposal to break up MPS puts the union in opposition with its local affiliate in the state's largest school district, the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association.

Bell said it was necessary to "shake up" the school system where she said WEAC has been working on education reform for two years and hasn't seen any significant progress.

"It simply is too big," she said.

Both the state Department of Public Instruction and Gov. Scott Walker's office were quiet on the MPS-configuration proposal. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said multiplying the MPS bureaucracy by four or eight was not the right way to drive reform.

Barrett and spokesmen for Walker and the Department of Public Instruction all said they welcomed WEAC's support for a revised evaluation system and merit-based pay.

School Board President Michael Bonds was more outwardly critical, calling WEAC's move "a gimmick" aimed at getting back in the headlines after an election in which the Democratic candidates the union generally supports were ousted by Republicans.

"I've been School Board president for two years and have had zero contact with Mary Bell," Bonds said. "The idea of breaking up MPS has been around for years, but they obviously didn't do their homework, as most school districts are going to more centralized operations."

Bonds said the district has started to change direction under Superintendent Greg Thornton, and that those reforms need to be given a chance to succeed. Bonds pointed to the new $20 million GE Foundation grant aimed at improving curriculum and management practices in the district and the health care concessions Thornton negotiated with the MTEA.

MTEA President Mike Langyel said his organization did not play a role in shaping WEAC's new proposal, and that he was interested in continuing to work with Thornton on district reform. The Milwaukee union is already working on establishing a new evaluation system for the district's teachers, Langyel said, adding that he expects a report on it this spring and possible implementation in the fall.

'Huge move' for WEAC

State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), the new chairman of the Senate Education Committee, called WEAC's announcement a "huge move."

He attributed the union's change in position to political pressure, as more states contemplate measures that erode traditional union protections in efforts to improve classroom instruction.

"I think they know this is happening across the country, and we're going to do it in Wisconsin, and so they decided, 'We can sit on the sidelines or we can play ball,' and I'm glad they're interested in playing ball," said Olsen, who is working on reform efforts aimed at ensuring that schools can remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.

While he credited the union for abandoning its past resistance to reform, he also said it remains to be seen whether Republican legislators can work with union leaders in crafting acceptable solutions.

Bell acknowledged Tuesday that the union's new proposals were a diversion from its past positions. She said the organization did not support former Gov. Tommy Thompson's proposal to break up MPS into districts of 25,000 or fewer students. She also said that reform measures floated during the Race to the Top federal education grant competition, such as using student test scores in teacher evaluations, didn't receive WEAC's support because they were nestled in with other proposals the state's 98,000-member union did not like.

"We're prepared to talk about them now as union-supported proposals," Bell said.

She said the union's new positions are not a pre-emptive strike against Republican leaders in Madison, who have been expected to release their own package of education-reform proposals.

The union's change of heart also comes on the heels of the Journal Sentinel's eight-part series about teacher quality in Wisconsin, which reported that lawmakers and WEAC had been slow to pick up on policies that have been pursued more aggressively in other states.

WEAC offered the following details for its three education-reform proposals:

• New teacher evaluation system: The statewide system would be based on a peer review for new educators and video and written analysis for veteran teachers.

Teachers in their first three years of teaching would be reviewed by a panel of their peers and administrators, who would draw upon student assessment data with the help of the University of Wisconsin's Value-Added Research Center. Bell said that some teachers may not be able to meet the state standards WEAC envisions for its teachers in their first three years, and that those teachers should be moved out of the teaching profession and offered career transition services.

Senior teachers would be evaluated only once every three years and would have to submit a video of themselves teaching as well as a written commentary. If principals deemed teachers insufficient in their skills, they would go through the process a second year, and if the principal still wasn't satisfied, the teacher would go through the peer assistance and review process three more years.

• Modernizing pay schedules: WEAC proposes overhauling the current teacher pay schedules - which awards raises based on a teacher's education and years of experience - in favor of a career ladder with three rungs - initial educator, professional educator and master educator. Pay advancement would be based on professional growth and learning tied to classroom objectives.

Bell said the union envisioned incentive pay for teachers in tough-to-fill assignments such as bilingual or special education. She also proposed the establishment of a professional residency program for new teachers that would operate similarly to a medical internship. New teachers who successfully complete this residency could come in at a higher salary than new teachers who do not complete a residency.

Bell did not comment on whether, under the new proposal, some current teachers could see their pay reduced to pay for rewards for other teachers. It's unclear how Walker's yet-to-be-released budget, which will tell school districts how much money to expect, would affect such a proposal.

• Reconfiguring MPS: Bell called on policy-makers to convene a group of parents, teachers and stakeholders to decide how to restructure MPS into manageable components. She said she hoped that group could come up with a legislative proposal by July 2012 to break up the district, with potential implementation in 2015.

Amy Hetzner of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

About Erin Richards

Erin Richards covers K-12 education in urban and suburban Milwaukee, as well as state politics related to education issues.